Erlan wrinkled his nose at me, and I watched his face while he thought hard. Sometimes people at school—well, my old school, Mountford—thought me and Erlan were related because we were both Asian, and because we spent so much time together, I guess. Once some kid at lunch even asked if we were twins, which made Erlan snort milk up his nose, and I laughed so hard I got a stomachache, because Erlan’s brother Erik was sitting right across from us. But anyway, we’re not. Related, I mean. Erlan’s family is Kazakh, from Kazakhstan, and I’m half Korean, half Swiss, so we’re not even from the same sort of place. But sometimes people have trouble figuring that stuff out.
“I don’t think it will be fun,” Erlan told me. “I don’t want everybody in the world to watch me pooping!”
“I thought you said they couldn’t film you in the bathroom.”
“You know what I mean,” Erlan said, even though I wasn’t sure I did. “I just want to be left alone.”
“Oh,” I told him. I guessed that made sense. But still. I couldn’t help thinking that it would be awfully nice to have people think you were interesting enough to put on TV.
We spent the morning hanging out in Erlan’s quilt fort, playing board games. Erlan’s favorite game is chess. He’s really good at it—he has trophies and everything. But he knows I don’t like that one, so he doesn’t try to make me play it anymore. Instead we play Operation, and Chutes and Ladders, and sometimes Monopoly or cards. Erlan’s sister Roza made fun of us one time (I think it was Roza), and asked how come we only ever played little-kid games, but Erlan told her to just shut up, that she was being a snob. Then he decided he was going to teach me poker, which I sort of liked.
“It’s going to be weird at school this year without you there,” Erlan said. I was deciding which cards from my hand to trade in. We were playing poker for seashells, and Erlan had more shells than me, but not a lot more. “It’s gonna stink, I bet.”
“Yeah,” I said. But it was hard to feel bad for Erlan when I was feeling so bad for me. He’d still have his brothers, and his sisters too, plus all our other friends. And once his show was on TV, everyone in the world practically would know who he was and love him and think he was cool. And I wasn’t going to know anybody at my new school. “I bet.”
“It’s not like Albie’s going to Turkey,” came a voice from outside the fort. Alma, maybe. “He lives right down the hall.”
“Ainyr!” Erlan screeched, pulling back the quilt. So I guess it was Ainyr. “What are you doing? Get out of here!”
Ainyr did not get out of there. She kept standing in the doorway, with her hands on her hips. Behind her in the living room, there were two cameramen and a lady with a clipboard shouting.
“Mom says it’s time for you to do your pre-interview. I’m supposed to come get you.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“You have to,” Ainyr told him. “Mom and Dad said. And”—her eyes lit up a little bit—“they want to put makeup on you.”
Erlan hollered so loudly at that, my ears almost fell off. It was so loud that I couldn’t really hear the words he was saying, but I’d bet probably it was something about not wanting to wear makeup.
I took my hands off my ears just in time to hear Ainyr say, “I don’t care if you want to look like a washed-out ghost on national TV. But you have to do the interview. Mom and Dad said.” And then she stormed out of the room, and left the door wide open.
“Come on,” I told Erlan when she was gone. He looked upset again, and I didn’t like when he was upset. He was my best friend, so it was my job to make him happy. “I’ll go with you.” And I gave him the Vulcan salute, which was just the four fingers on my right hand making a V. It was from an old TV show that Erlan’s dad liked. He tried to make us watch a couple times, and me and Erlan didn’t really get it, but we liked the pointy-ear stuff and the Vulcan salute.